Six Great Books

Gay Parents Belong in Our Communities--and in Our Stories

I live in Washington, DC, where same-sex marriage is legal.  I find it odd that as the Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), DOMA’s defenders keep insisting on procreation as the purpose of marriage--as if there were no overlap between gay marriage and baby-making.  I had mixed feelings when I heard Elena Kagan countering such arguments with her comment that in marriages of heterosexuals over fifty-five, “there aren’t a lot of children coming out of those marriages.”  Her heart is in the right place and this eminently quotable comment, replayed over and over again on NPR, reminds us that the legal bond between two men or two women should be recognized by the federal government regardless of whether the partners intend to have children.  However, the truth is that many same-sex couples and gay single people do have children, whether through procreation or adoption.  It may be a little more challenging when procreation involves sperm donors, surrogates, or other “partners in procreation,” but in my opinion, that’s a good thing.

Art or Soup, Soup or Art?

In Jane Wagner's 1985 masterpiece, "Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe," Lily Tomlin embodies characters with still relevant questions about how our society got where it is and where the hell we are headed. What is inspired and what is simply insipid?

Wagner's script and Tomlin's performance nail that question with Trudy, a homeless bag lady, as she ponders art is our society by holding up two found objects - a can of Campbell's soup and an Andy Warhol Campbell Soup print. "Soup or art, art or soup?" she asks looking back and forth between the two.

I had the same dilemma when I saw the the story today on Tida Swinton's performance piece at MoMA - she is sleeping in a glass box in a gallery, is that art or is it soup? Soup or art? Like Trudy I'm gonna have to ponder this but I'm thinking Swinton's performance would go well with crackers. 

Making the Mundane Magical

Fellow writer and Six Great Books contributor, Molly Mahoney Matthews, is sending marvelous missives from her visit to Vietnam. She writes of coffee, commuting, little girls and lychee nuts, the everyday in a remote land that is usually paired with the word war. The way Molly is sharing her view of the mundane is magical, she has managed to erase the images of bullets and bodies that I have associated with Vietnam for so long. That is what writing and sharing does, it changes perspectives and perceptions. Thanks Molly. You can follow Molly's adventures on her blog, Unsinkable.  

Does Race Authenticate Identity?

Interesting discussion on reddit.com about writing from the perspective of someone other than your own racial background. Specifically the writer asked, as a white woman, how does she authentically capture the persona of a black female character. My answer? Race is not a persona. You cannot authentically write about a black person based on the color of their skin any more than you can a white person. Experiences, exposure, economics, education, geography, love, pain, pleasure etc., in other words, life makes us who we are and how we are.

Like this young writer, the characters in my novel-in-progress, Provenance, similarly struggle to know each other and themselves without the convenient utility of race. Using art as a theme throughout the story, they ultimately discover that people, like art, have a provenance. As my character Dottie Lee Davis says,

“Folk wear their provenance on their faces and carry it in their hearts. Sometimes
they try to hide it but its all there. Where you were born, who you come from,
who you loved and who loves you. Who hurt you and who you’ve hurt, where you've been and sometimes where you’re going. Just don’t need a ten dollar word like provenance to describe it when a dollar word like history will do. History works just fine, for everyone and everything, art and people, all got history.”

So to the writer that posed the questions as a black woman and a writer I suggest you write about the glorious sum of all that a character has experienced. That is as authentic as you can make any character; black, white or indifferent.

Check the Reddit post and corresponding comments here.

Yes, I Am Still Working on the Same Novel

Meredith Maran’s just released, Why We Write, 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do, is just what a writer needs. When you’ve invested hours, days, weeks and years and you know that you're still not finished with this book you must write, it does make you wonder.

“When I’m writing…I’m living in two difference dimensions:
this life I’m living now…and this completely other world I’m inhabiting that no
one else knows about.”  - Jennifer Egan

“You’ve got to write and revise every sentence, every
paragraph, and every page over and over until the rhythm, the cadence, and tone
are properly attuned to your inner ear.”  - Sue Grafton

When renowned writers remind you that writing is an individual passion and a meticulous process that requires faith, time and dedication; it encourages you to go on.

Virgin Launches First Art Gallery in the Sky

Virgin Launches First Art Gallery in the Sky.

Street Art by nature is public and accessible, visual art for everyone. Virgin Atlantic is making works by a renowned British street artist exclusively available to upper class passengers between New York and London. Is this a good thing? Is it making the pedestrian (literally) the exclusive purview of the prosporous?

And the Winner is the Red Carriage Cover!

This summer, I finally warmed up to the idea of self-publishing.  Having been through the long process of pitching my first novel, Blind Girl’s Bluff, to scores of literary agents, I lacked the energy to court such rejection again with my second novel, Au Pair Report.  Several conscientious agents had expressed interest in Blind Girl’s Bluff only to conclude that it was not marketable enough.  Because Au Pair Report had a natural primary audience—moms who read fiction—it seemed more marketable to me until I began subscribing to the Publishers Marketplace email service listing all book deals made each day.  It became clear to me that publishers are not purchasing debut fiction unless it promises to be the next Hunger Games or Fifty Shades of Grey.  They make exceptions for celebrities and well-connected graduates of MFA programs (particularly the Iowa Writers’ Workshop), but since I fall into neither category, I decided to overcome my desire for the publishing industry’s stamp of approval.

It has taken me a few months to get over the logistical hurdles of self-publishing, but I expect to make Au Pair Report available as an ebook via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords by the end of the year.  I took the past week off from my “real job” to move the project forward, and hired a designer from ebooklaunch.com to create a cover for me.  The designer, Dane Low, presented me with three designs and I polled a number of friends to find out which was most appealing and what each cover conveyed about the book.  The process was fun and the results were fascinating.

The winning cover was this stylized collage with a woman and a red carriage.  Interestingly, while it had the greatest number of votes in favor of it, it also had a fair number of detractors.  Opinion was divided about its earthy aesthetic that recalled Soviet socialist realism for one person and folksy needlepoint samplers for another.  However, what matters most is that the cover communicated to prospective readers that the book is about the world of moms, children, and caregivers. 

Meg Wolitzer's "The Second Shelf" Strikes a Nerve

If you haven't read author Meg Wolitzer's provocative essay on the different rules for men and women in the world of literary fiction, you must read this. Her April 1, 2012 essay, The Second Shelf, for the New York Times Book Review told known and rarely acknowledged truths about the publishing industry. Basically that "isms," (racism, sexism, chauvinism and I would add ageism) are alive and well in traditional publishing. The"isms" result in first rate fiction by women being marketed as second rate "Women's Fiction," aka something a man would never read. Seems when men like Jonathan Frazen, Jeffrey Eugenides and Chad Harbach for example, write about the same subjects as female writers - marriage, family, relationships - they just write great fiction. I suppose that's because testosterone instead of estrogen was involved in the writing of the book. What else could possibly explain the disparity?

The Times is still printing letters to the editor on Wolitzer's essay, the links are below - read, learn, comment.

Thanks Meg.

The Second Shelf

The Second Shelf - Readers Respond

The Second Shelf - More Readers Respond

Does The Help, Help?

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is, by any measure, a media phenomenon. On the January 15, 2012 New York Times Best Sellers list, The Help tops combined Print and E-Book sales and it is #1 in Trade Fiction. According to Box Office Mojo, as of January 5, 2012, the movie grossed $170 million in North America and $34 million in other territories, for a whopping worldwide total of $203,427,931. Add to all that the DVD of the film that sold just south of 3 million units since its release in early December 2011. In what some believe is our post-racial society it seems a lot of folks are still interested in race relations. Does interest and exploration of the pre-civil rights era do anything for race relations today? Does The Help help us going forward or does it keep us tethered to the past?

Kathryn Stockett’s story takes place in the 1960s, we are now more than a half century past that point in time and yet so much that is written or produced about race is about what occurred in the past. We’ve all benefitted from the courage and conviction of the women and men – the Abelines, Minnies and Medgars - who were the frontline of the civil rights movement but it’s time to change the focus and engage in a new narrative.

Over the last few years I found myself avoiding media that looked backward into the black experience in America. I know the problems already, we all do. Despite my preference for exploring the present and the future of race in America, I read The Help and I watched the movie. The experience left me wondering why aren’t we telling tales for the 21^st Century? Like any good story, shouldn’t we want to know what happens next?

My novel, Provenance, takes that forward looking view of what race now looks like in America. As one of my characters, Ella puts it:

We’ve loaded and unloaded enough trucks, scrubbed enough floors, welded enough seams and hauled enough garbage, we know how to work hard. That has never been our problem. The next step is to work smarter, not just harder; it is understanding the power of wealth and putting yourself in a place where you can use it to enrich yourself and others.

 

Ella chooses the art world as that place and there are others venues in the 21^st Century – finance, diplomacy, education, business and even literature and entertainment. There may still be remnants of 1960s style racism but the challenges to our shared racial future are different today. While there must always be reverence for the amazing things accomplished in the past, there is also enough content, compassion, conflict and culture to create a new narrative that helps us into the present minus the white uniforms, separate bathrooms and seats at the back of the bus. Perhaps my novel, Provenance, can be the media phenomenon for what’s next for race relations in the 21^st century.

Naked

Steve Jobs shared the best of his perspective on life and work in the commencement speech he gave at Stanford University in 2005. There is a wealth of wisdom in that speech, not the least of which he saves for the end, "Stay Hungy. Stay Foolish." He also reminds us that we are all naked, we come in that way and we go out that way, so we really have very little to lose. For me, Jobs' advice and counsel is timely indeed. My manuscript is finally finished. I've handed it off to be reviewed by an editor so that it will be letter perfect when it goes in search of an agent. Talk about feeling naked! 

Sending my novel to strangers has me feeling exposed on so many different levels. But I am also hungry for the writer's life and I foolishly believe that "I" can get my book published. So, I am my book and my book is me and together we stride unabashedly naked into the publishing arena with little to lose.